Page 50 of 384
47 Expulsion. How long that interlude lasted, the Bible does not say. Since, as we have shown, the biblical narrative is based on Sumerian sources, the simplest solution to the problem is also the most plausible. In the Sumerian sexagesimal ("base 60") mathematical system, the cuneiform sign for "1" could mean one or could mean sixty, depending on the position of the sign, just as "I" could mean one or ten or one hundred depending on the digit's position in the decimal system (ex- cept that we make distinction easy by the use of "0" to indicate position, writing 1, 10, 100 etc.). Could it not then be that the redactors of the Hebrew Bible, seeing in the Sum- erian sources the sign "I", took it to mean One rather than Sixty? Based on such an assumption, the numbers 1,656 (the birth of Adam), 1,526 (the birth of Seth) and 1,421 (the birth of Enosh) are converted to 99,360, 91,560 and 85,260 respec- tively. To determine how long ago that was, we have to add the 13,000 years since the Deluge; the numbers then become Adam born 112,360 years ago Seth born 104,560 years ago Enosh born 98,260 years ago The solution offered here by us leads to astounding results. It places the Adam-Seth-Enosh line right in the time slot when Neanderthals and then Cro-Magnons passed through the Lands of the Bible as they spread toward Asia and Europe. It means that the individual (not the generic) Adam was the biblical Man whom we term Neanderthal, and that Enosh, whose name meant "Human," was the biblical term for what we call Cro- Magnon—the first Homo sapiens sapiens, indeed the fore- father of Enoshut, today's humanity. It was then, the Bible asserts, that humanity "began to call upon the name of Yahweh." Man was ready for renewed Divine Encounters; and some that then occurred were truly astounding. When Paradise Was Lost